Question: In chemistry class, the girl to boy ratio is $3$ to $8$. If there are a total of $55$ students, how many boys are there?
A ratio of $3$ girls to $8$ boys means that a set of $11$ students will have $3$ girls and $8$ boys. A class of $55$ students has $5$ sets of $11$ students. Because we know that there are $8$ boys in each set of $11$ students, the class must have $5$ groups of $8$ boys each. There is a total of $40$ boys in chemistry class.